A Light to Banish the Dark
by Ellingtonia
Summary: Lucius is a biotic with powers he doesn't fully know how to use, and his rare physiology makes him a target for Cerberus, among others. He's a little naive and probably not the sharpest tool in the shed, but as his biotic powers grow he's just the man you want next to you in a fight for the galaxy. A retelling of the Mass Effect trilogy with an OC character to shake things up.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Pragia - 2170

Dr. Stephen Kim sat at his desk and stared off into space, his chin resting on his hand. He had been toiling away at Cerberus' Teltin facility on Pragia for a little over two years, most of which he had found unbearable. Endless days of theorising how to improve biotic abilities in humans, coming up with ideas and testing countless possibilities on their child subjects only to have most of them fail entirely, and those that didn't fail succeeded only barely. While it was true that Subject Zero was making promising progress, Stephen had seen long before his colleagues that it would ultimately be a dead end. Subject Zero was the result of fourteen procedures so far, most of which cost a small fortune to perform and had disappointingly small results. When added together the effects were more significant, and if they continued to make progress she would undoubtedly become a very powerful biotic, perhaps even the most powerful among humans. However, these techniques would never be realistic for widespread use. It just made no sense to spend the cost of a frigate on a few painful procedures to improve a single biotic's strength by only a couple of percentage points. He had well and truly lost hope, only remaining in his position for the money (and, of course, because Cerberus was not the kind of organisation one simply quit) when Lucius arrived.

Lucius, a seven year old biotic, came to be on Pragia the same way all of the children did: unconscious, in an unmarked shuttle. Some were taken from their families by Cerberus doctors, who told them that their child had died in varying circumstances, while in some cases children were simply taken off the streets on the way to school. Even in this 'enlightened' era children still just vanished occasionally, and as long as they didn't take too many that way no one would connect the disappearances. The simplest method by far, though, was just to take orphans. With Cerberus' connections and resources all it took was a few bribes and a falsified death certificate and a biotic orphan could be transferred to their custody with no fuss and no paper trail. No one would ever come looking for these children, no one would even notice their absence. Few noticed that they had ever existed to begin with. Lucius was one of these children. A routine medical scan at his orphanage at the age of two had revealed the presence of eezo nodules in his body, which would allow him the use of biotic abilities. True, there weren't all that many nodules; he would never be a particularly useful biotic, but enough for the purposes of their experiments. Cerberus spyware in Alliance systems immediately flagged him as a potential candidate and five years later he was taken to Pragia.

Dr. Kim had been the one to greet the unconscious child, doing a quick physical check and, as procedure dictated, doing another medical scan to confirm his abilities. Stephen was just going through the motions, barely paying attention, when the scan showed something very strange. Lucius had far more nodules than the original scan had identified, almost three times as many. Still not as many as several of the children at the facility, but this kind of growth just didn't happen. Eezo nodules grew in the womb, as a rare result of the pregnant mother being exposed to dust-form element zero. When the child was carried to term the number of nodes that had developed would be the number of nodes the child would have throughout their lives. Everyone knew that. Every scan and every test had confirmed it, not only those done by Cerberus but all through the Systems Alliance. Hell, all through the galaxy. Every species had confirmed that exposing a foetus to eezo sometimes resulted in these nodules, but that post-birth exposure only resulted in illness or death. No one had ever successfully grown new nodules in any species, ever.

At first Stephen didn't believe it, so he repeated the scan a second time, then a third time only to get the same result. What could have caused this? Obviously the child couldn't have actually grown more nodules, could he? It had to have been the original scan five years ago that was wrong. But when he compared the two scans he saw that the newer nodules were roughly the same size and in the same locations as the original nodules, so how could even the basic scanner at the orphanage have picked up some while missing other identical ones all around it? There must have been a mix-up with the records… but no other child at that orphanage had been flagged as biotic so there was no one that Lucius could have had his scan accidentally switched with. Stephen's mind raced with the possibilities, but he did nothing for now.

The biotic strength of an individual was the result of three factors: the number of eezo nodules in the body, the ability to control those nodules, and the assistance of technology. The technological aspect, namely the neural implants and amplifiers which all biotics used, were widely studied and were gradually being improved by labs all throughout the galaxy. Without these most human biotics could barely throw a ball across a room, let alone a person. Secondly, the ability to control one's eezo nodules was a skill that improved with age and could be improved further with practise and training. On Pragia they were researching various pharmaceutical, neurological and surgical ways of improving this control further. They were one of only a few facilities doing this kind of research, as it required the kind of experimentation on sentients that was illegal in most jurisdictions. Dr. Kim was under no illusions that the work he was doing would get him anywhere other than an Alliance prison cell if it came to light. Finally, no serious researcher was trying to increase the number of nodules, everyone knew it was impossible, and yet…

One month after Lucius' arrival Dr. Kim repeated the scan. He was in a high enough position at the facility that he had been successful in keeping the boy out of the other experiments without attracting too much attention. He didn't want anything getting in the way in what could be a revolutionary discovery. The machine beeped to signal the scan's completion and Stephen eagerly viewed the results and began grinning ecstatically. A redo of the scan confirmed it: the body of this child had somehow spontaneously grown more eezo nodules. Not many more, after all it had only been a month, but the growth of even one was unheard of. Dr. Kim immediately thought to bring this to the attention of the facility's head researcher, but stopped himself. He hated that woman, and knew she would probably steal all credit he was due. This was his opportunity to get out of this place and finally do some work which could actually be useful. No, he would take this straight to The Illusive Man himself.

* * *

Horizon - 2170

Three months later Dr. Kim and a small team of researchers were setting up a lab on Horizon, a new human colony perfect for their purposes. In some ways he was surprised it had taken this long to get started; after his first message to The Illusive Man the response had been… skeptical. In fact, he had seemed rather disbelieving, and annoyed to have been bothered by something so ridiculous by a relatively junior scientist. But of course it had been too tempting not to look into it further, and after a few months the other staff at Pragia had confirmed it. Lucius was somehow continuously growing more eezo nodules in his body.

After that things moved very quickly. The decision was made to move Lucius to another facility, smaller than Pragia but solely dedicated to unlocking the mysteries he contained, and Dr. Kim had managed to talk his way into leading the team responsible. Located on the outskirts of Horizon's main colony, the lab was registered under a chain of shell corporations. While the facility on Pragia was hidden from sight on an unpopulated and lawless planet, this lab was using the 'hiding in plain sight' strategy. Unlike the Pragia lab, they didn't need regular shipments of human subjects and so wouldn't attract too much attention.

Dr. Kim now had three scientists working directly under him, one of whom he knew from Pragia, while the other two were new to him. Perhaps they worked in other Cerberus labs or perhaps they were new to the organisation, he hadn't asked. In addition to the researchers there were two orderlies to assist them with the more mundane aspects of taking care of the child, and three security officers, with a small assortment of security mechs on hand if they needed them. Ostensibly they were there to protect the lab from outside interference, but half their time would really be spent making sure the other staff members kept to their confidentiality agreements. All in all it was a quite a small team, but there was always the option of expanding it as the need arose. And besides, a small team was that much easier to hide. If news of their discovery ever got out every biotic researcher in the galaxy would be looking for them, probably every government and military as well.

While the orderlies finished preparing what would become Lucius' quarters when he arrived in an hour, the scientists were setting up the final few pieces of lab equipment and excitedly discussing the task set before them. "I mean, this could be huge. This _is_ huge," said Dr. Boucher, who had followed Stephen from Pragia, "if the subject keeps growing nodules at this pace he could end up giving some asari matriarchs a run for their money."

"If," said Dr. Alawi. "This growth could stop at puberty, or just after puberty, or it could even stop tomorrow. We don't know a damn thing about what's causing it. The obvious candidate is some novel genetic mutation, but initial DNA screening hasn't shown anything strange in the expected places, which means we probably need to start trawling through unexpected places in his genome. Then of course there's potential environmental interactions, which means looking at every substance he ever came into contact with. Or his mother came into contact with during the pregnancy. Or even before the pregnancy? Maybe even his father if we can ever track him down…"

"Yes, yes, we're all aware of the enormity of the task ahead of us," interrupted Dr. Kim. "But that's why we're here, isn't it? Half the fun is in the searching, and the answer will be so much more rewarding if we've really had to work for it." He hadn't felt this young in years, all the frustration and hopelessness of Pragia seemed a distant memory.

"My question is, who is going to train the boy?" asked Dr. Michaels, the youngest and so far the quietest of the researchers. "I mean obviously we're all experts in biotic biology, but do any of us have any experience in training one to actually use their abilities?"

"Why would we bother training him?" answered Dr. Kim. "I think you're missing the point. Sure, if this growth continues the subject could become very powerful, but it's not actually his power we're concerned with. Once we figure out what is causing this miraculous growth in him, we can start the real work of getting it to work in others. Imagine the implications of being able to grow more nodules in other biotics, or maybe even in people who weren't biotic to begin with. One biotic, no matter how powerful, can only do so much. But a whole army of super-charged biotics? That could really put humanity at the forefront of galactic power. Maybe we'll need to teach him a few basics eventually, but I'm sure we can handle it. If not I'm sure The Illusive Man will send someone. He knows how important this project is."

"And if it's our safety you're concerned with," added Dr. Boucher, "we'll keep his amplifier switched off remotely until we need him to use his abilities, if we ever do. That's what we did to the kids at…" Stephen stopped her with a sharp look. Cerberus kept its cells seperate, with knowledge of other facilities and operations on a need-to-know basis. This was something the higher-ups, and the security officers patrolling nearby, took very seriously. "…my previous place of employment," she finished. The other two knew enough not to inquire further. They knew that Dr. Kim and Dr. Boucher had come together from another Cerberus biotic research lab, but the details of that work and especially its location was irrelevant to their current task and potentially dangerous for them to know.

The awkward silence was broken by the sound of a shuttle landing nearby. "Oh, they must be early!" Dr. Kim said gleefully while walking briskly out the door in the direction of the landing pad. By the time he arrived he found one of the orderlies leading the boy inside as the shuttle took off again. "Welcome Lucius, welcome! Come, let me show you to where you'll be staying," he said as he turned and walked back into the building.

They soon came to a small room, simply furnished. There was a small bed in one corner, a few cupboards against a wall, a child-sized chair and desk with a small vid-screen, and finally a toilet and sink, but no mirror, in another corner. Everything the boy would need. "Here you go Lucius, this is your new home. I'll leave you to get settled. If you need anything just push this button by the door and one of the orderlies will come to check on you." Dr. Kim then left the room to return to his colleagues, locking the door behind him.

Much later that night Dr. Kim was finally ready to turn in for the night, though with all his excitement he knew sleep would be hard to come by. Most of the others had already gone to bed, only one of the orderlies, on the night shift, remained nearby watching some trashy movie with his earphones in, while one of the security officers was presumably still at a desk near the front entrance keeping half an eye on some security screens. Stephen didn't bother saying goodnight to either of them. He walked past Lucius' quarters on the way to his own when he thought he heard some faint crying. He opened the door to see Lucius lying on his side on the bed curled into a ball, his eyes red and puffy.

"What's wrong Lucius?"

"I'm c-cold," he sniffed, "and I m-miss my f-friends."

"Oh. Well here, there are some extra blankets in this cupboard here." He pulled a folded blanket out of one of the cupboards and placed it on the bed next to Lucius. "Now try and get some sleep, we've got a big day tomorrow. A big and exciting day." He left the room, rubbing his hands together eagerly as he proceeded to his own bed. 'Where should we start tomorrow?' he thought, 'I think a CSF sample would be best, surely there's something interesting to see there.' Neither the researcher nor his subject would fall asleep for several hours.

 **Author's Note**

 **This story does start a little slow, so I plan on updating once every two days until we meet up with Shepard around chapter 5, then I'll go to weekly updates. Hopefully I'll continue all the way through the trilogy. I'll be sticking fairly close to canon, but with my OC character (Lucius) to mix things up a bit and eventually the small changes might add up to bigger changes. These early chapters are essentially Lucius' backstory, and while I'm not super happy with all of them I did really want to get to the main plot. I may come back and rewrite some at a later date. This is pretty much the first thing I've ever written so constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Horizon - 2175

Dr. Stephen Kim sat at his desk and stared off into space, his chin resting on his hand. It had been a long five years, and progress had been… slow. The nodules were forming in the subject's body in much the same way that they formed in all biotics while in the womb, but they had as yet been unable to identify why that process was continuing in him. They had found a genetic mutation in his DNA which vastly improved the regeneration of nerve cells; this was almost certainly part of the solution, but unfortunately not the whole picture. This mutation was exceptionally rare, but not unique to Lucius, around 0.1% of the population had it. Cerberus had even managed to track down two other biotics with the gene, but they were otherwise presenting normally. This suggested that the gene in Lucius was interacting with some other gene and/or something he was exposed to at some point it his life. To say it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack would be a vast understatement, it was more like searching a junkyard for a specific piece of scrap, only you didn't know which specific piece of scrap you were looking for exactly. Every possibility had to be individually examined and tested, and so far every possibility had been eliminated.

Lucius was twelve now, and was generally a quiet, shy and well-behaved. There were certainly the occasional tantrums or small acts of rebellion, as there would be with any child, but they were quickly controlled by the orderlies, who it turns out had very similar ideas about the value of corporal punishment. He came across as a little slow in most of their interactions, but whether that was due to a low IQ or simply the lack of any genuine intellectual stimulation these past five years was unclear. The subject's education and intelligence was deemed irrelevant to the study and ignored.

Eventually they did get a specialist to come in for a couple of weeks and teach Lucius some of the basics of using his abilities: how to do a basic throw, form a basic barrier and reduce the mass of objects around him. It was thought that maybe observing him use his abilities and comparing his rate of growth before and after strenuous use might yield some useful information. It had not. But still, they had cleared out one of the larger rooms for him to play in occasionally, get some exercise and throw some balls around. If Lucius was particularly good they would even turn on his amplifier at half charge and let him experiment with his abilities in this room, which he greatly enjoyed. It helped keep him sane, and keeping him sane helped to keep him in line.

When he wasn't in this exercise room, or being used for some procedure (they had taken samples from every type of tissue they could think of in a search for clues) he was watching kid's TV shows on the small screen in his room. His favourite featured a young girl, her robot friend and their various adventures. There weren't many episodes; it had been cancelled after just two seasons, supposedly after political pressure from a vocal minority of mothers who were concerned that it made light of the threat of artificial intelligence. Lucius had thus seen every episode several times. It was also targeted at children much younger than him, in fact most of the shows they had for him to watch were, the orderlies had obtained a large library of programs to distract him when he was seven and hadn't updated it since. He didn't seem to mind, the staff weren't sure if he even really noticed.

While Lucius usually seemed content enough, Dr. Kim was not. His initial enthusiasm had soon turned to frustration at the lack of progress, and that had slowly faded into a kind of hopelessness. He sometimes felt like he was back on Pragia, endlessly testing theories only to see them all fail. He had a glimmer of hope that once puberty began in earnest something might change, that the hormonal changes might trigger an acceleration, deceleration, or even an outright stop to the growth of new nodules, and that any of those might provide helpful clues, but unfortunately Lucius seemed to be a late bloomer. Up until that point they had been able to slow the growth by drastically cutting Lucius' rations, while conversely increasing his rations had not seemed to increase the growth rate from his baseline. They hadn't been able to draw any useful conclusions from this.

The sound of an approaching shuttle interrupted his reverie. He glanced over at Dr. Boucher, who was working nearby, but she looked just as confused as he was. They weren't expecting any visitors, and a supply drop wasn't due for over a week. Peering outside the room they were working in he saw one of the security officers walking calmly down the hallway towards the landing pad. This was a little comforting, as the officer would surely have been running or at least looking concerned if he thought there was any chance this was some kind of problem. But it did suggest that the security team might know something that he, supposedly the head of this facility, did not, and that was… troubling. Dr. Kim went to follow the officer out to the landing pad, passing one of the orderlies on the way.

"Any idea what all this is about?" asked the doctor.

"None at all," the orderly shrugged, before continuing on to the kitchen to begin preparing lunch. The orderlies were obviously not selected for their curiosity, but then Dr. Kim already knew that.

At that moment the security officer returned through the front entrance leading two other unfamiliar officers and a man in a crisp grey suit.

"Dr. Kim, I presume?" asked the man in the suit as he approached, "My name is Mr. White and I've been sent by The Illusive man, we need to talk."

Dr. Kim audibly gulped. "What is it? I mean, come with me, my office is this way, we can talk there."

A few minutes later they were seated in a small, cramped office. Some of the furniture had a thin layer of dust on them; Dr. Kim rarely used the room, he had little use for it as all his work was done in the labs. Nevertheless he had insisted that he have one, as befitted his position as head researcher. As they sat down he opened his mouth to start asking questions, but Mr. White interrupted him.

"Let's cut to the chase Stephen, The Illusive Man has lost faith in your ability to see this project through to completion. He's decided to shut down this facility."

"That's… what? That's a huge mistake. Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"You are being informed now," he tapped a few keys on his omni-tool, "I've just sent you and your colleagues information on your next assignments, you are to remain here until transport is arranged."

"This isn't happening… surely The Illusive Man understands how important this work is?" Dr. Kim had long since stopped enjoying his work, but he knew that Cerberus did not reward failure. This reassignment would be to some menial position doing unimportant work, and that was the best case scenario. There was the very real possibility that he would end the day rotting in a ditch. He was desperate to salvage his position.

"Follow me, apparently you need to see this," he said as he got out of the chair he had only just sat in and walked out of the room. The other man sighed, then followed.

They soon came to Lucius' exercise room. Dr. Kim unlocked the door and they entered to see Lucius bouncing a small ball off one of the walls. "Lucius, put the ball down and come here. I would like you to show this man here what you can do." Dr. Kim tapped away at his omni-tool for a moment, activating Lucius' amplifier and setting it to 100% charge. Lucius felt a thrill run down his spine and his arm hairs briefly stood on end. He felt stronger than he had ever felt.

"Lucius, I'd like you to throw that weight over there against the wall as hard as you can," said Dr. Kim, gesturing to a large 30kg kettlebell weight in the corner.

"As - as hard as I can?" asked Lucius hesitantly.

"Yes yes, hurry now."

A blue aura surrounded Lucius' body, then concentrated around his arms as he waved them in front of him. The kettlebell flew through the air in a blur before slamming into the far wall with a crash. A significant amount of concrete dust filled that side of the room while the weight hung embedded into the wall for a few seconds, before falling back to the floor with another bang. The man in the suit surreptitiously pressed a few buttons on his omni-tool as both Dr. Kim and Lucius looked at the damage proudly.

"See that! This is only a child with next to no training, and I think we both know he's only going to get stronger. If we can apply this to others we could have whole squadrons, even whole armies of soldiers who could do things far more impressive than that. Soldiers loyal to Cerberus. Surely The Illusive Man can see the potential here!"

"You misunderstand," Mr. White said coldly, "It's not the boy that we're shutting down, it's you. You've been here five years now and you have practically nothing to show for it. The boy will be moved to another facility for others to work the problem. Hopefully some fresh eyes and more… intensive methods will yield results where you have failed."

A security officer entered the room, one of the three officers Dr. Kim had seen almost everyday for the past half-decade. "Ahh here you are, please escort Dr. Kim and the other researchers to their quarters. Keep them there until I depart with the subject" commanded Mr. White. The officer stared at Dr. Kim like he was a stranger and gestured to the door with his head, keeping his hands firmly on his rifle. Dr. Kim looked back and forth between the two men hopelessly before resigning to his fate and leaving the room.

A few moments later an orderly entered carrying a tray of food: Lucius' lunch. He looked at the hole in the wall and raised an eyebrow before silently handing the tray to the boy, who was too distracted by his destructive feat that he hadn't realised the upheaval about to happen to his life. Mr. White stopped the orderly before he left, "I'll be taking the boy for transport after his lunch. Will he need to be sedated for the trip? I'd prefer not to have to carry him."

"Oh, I don't think so," replied the orderly, "Lucius is a good boy, I'm sure he'll behave, won't you Lucius?"

Lucius nodded eagerly. He hated being sedated. It usually ended with him waking up with a new scar from the doctor's latest biopsy.

"Good. Go collect his things." The orderly nodded and left. Lucius didn't really have any 'things' per se, but he would fill a bag with a few changes of clothes and a toothbrush, etc.

"How long am I going away for?" asked Lucius. He was nervous; he hadn't left the facility in the entire time he had been there, not even to briefly go outside.

"I'll explain everything on the way. Finish your lunch and then we'll go." Mr. White left the room to make sure the other researchers were being handled, leaving the boy to eat his meal sitting on the dust and chips of concrete that had formerly been a part of his home. After about an hour Mr. White and his two guards led Lucius to the shuttle and they left.

* * *

Their shuttle soon joined with a larger ship where Mr. White got off, leaving Lucius with the two guards for quite some time. After a while he felt movement again, but the shuttle was silent so it must have been the lager ship they had landed in that was moving. Despite Mr. White's promise nothing had been explained to him, and he was too scared to ask them any questions. Lucius had always been afraid of the security officers back at Horizon, they were always holding dangerous looking rifles and wearing menacing armour and, though he didn't see them often, whenever he did they would stop what they were doing and stare at him coldly. These guards were much worse. They had similar weapons and rifles, but also wore full helmets which hid their faces. The Horizon guards' stares always sent a shiver down his spine, but these guards wouldn't even look at him. They just sat, ramrod straight, staring straight ahead. Somehow that was worse, it was like he was nothing to them. He fell asleep and woke a couple of times on an uncomfortable fold out cot until he couldn't be sure how long they had been there. Eventually Mr. White returned and the shuttle took off again.

"I'm afraid there's been a small change of plans Lucius," he said, "something urgent has come up that requires my attention, so we'll be making a stop here for the night before heading to your new home."

"Where is here?" Lucius asked tentatively, eyeing the motionless guards, "Where are we going tomorrow?"

"Here? Here doesn't matter, like I said we won't be here long. As for tomorrow, well just wait and see, I don't want to spoil the surprise." Mr. White smiled at Lucius, but somehow it wasn't a very reassuring smile.

The shuttle stopped moving and the large door opened again, revealing a large group of guards dressed the same as the two on the shuttle only without the full-face masks. Some carried rifles while others were moving crates off a second shuttle nearby. The room was large, more of a small warehouse really, with one of the walls housing the large hangar door (now slowly closing) they had just come through. Mr. White walked off the shuttle to speak to some of the men in the room, beckoning Lucius to follow him.

Lucius stood there, in an unknown place filled with unknown people, and began to breathe heavily. His previous home had been far from pleasant and he certainly wouldn't miss any of the people there, but it had been home. There was a predictability to it, a stability, but it was fully dawning on him now that it was all gone. The people around him now somehow seemed even less friendly than those who came before, and they would soon be taking him to who-knows-where for who-knows-how-long. He knew that the doctors at his previous home had been frustrated and even though he tried to do everything they said, and that their frustration was somehow directed at him. Was he being punished? They must have a pretty big punishment in store for him if they had to take him so far away to do it.

As the panic started to overwhelm him a faint blue aura started to surround him, growing less faint by the second. Mr. White had his back to him while he spat out instructions to the men before him, but some of those men had clearly noticed. Many gripped their rifles tighter and gave each other concerned, slightly fearful looks, which in turn only made Lucius more afraid.

Eventually one of them interrupted their commander: "Uhh sir, is he supposed to be doing that?"

"What?" said Mr. White, turning around to look at the boy. At first he was stunned silent, but then his eyes went wide. "That idiot! He forgot to turn of the kid's amp!" he cried as he furiously tapped at his omni-tool, trying to pair it with Lucius amp.

The nearest guards instantly raised their rifles and pointed them at Lucius, while the ones carrying boxes dropped them and backed away. This was too much for the fearful twelve year old boy, he covered his face with his arms and soon his whole body was wreathed in a blue fiery light. One terrified guard started shooting and soon they had all opened fire.

"Hold, hold your fire!" shouted Mr. White, "We need him alive!" Between the gunfire all around him and the blood rushing in his ears Lucius couldn't hear him. The bullets were bouncing harmlessly off the barrier he had instinctively raised, but he still felt each impact like someone was throwing small stones at him, hard. When the gunfire died away he lashed out biotically, knocking everyone in the room off their feet and sending those closest to him, including Mr. White and those who had been shooting, flying back several metres.

Lucius, shocked at what he had done, hesitated for a moment, until he saw some of the men start to move again. In a split-second decision, he ran. He ran towards the nearest door and threw it open with his biotics as some guards began to stand up. On the other side of the door he found himself on a thin balcony looking out at a city, with some kind of road or path several stories below him. At the other end of the balcony a door opened and more guards came through, guns raised. Behind him the first guards were on their feet, slowly approaching him. Using a move he had only begun to experiment with back in his exercise room, he lowered his mass significantly and tried to throw himself off the balcony, across the long gap to an identical balcony on the other side.

He overshot significantly, landing on the flat roof of the next building harshly, scraping his knees and palms on the rough ground. Looking behind him he saw a flurry of movement, heard shouting and the sound of the shuttles being powered up. He ran. He threw himself to the next building, landing a little more smoothly, then the next one, and the next one. He ran faster than he knew was possible, with legs pumping as quickly as they could and his weight reduced by his biotics.

As he heard the shuttles begin to catch up, he turned to the left and jumped down to the ground. Despite lowering his weight as much as he could to reduce the impact he landed clumsily, falling over and banging his head on the ground. Bruised, and with his ears ringing he spotted a small ramp built between two buildings which led down to some kind of metallic underground path. With shuttles still overhead he ran through the door revealing long, thin corridor.

He ran to the end of the corridor, turned right and ran into another corridor. He kept running and turning through a labyrinth of paths. Just he felt himself starting to calm down he turned another corner and almost ran into what appeared to him as a monster, green with black bulbous eyes, slightly taller than he was, with four legs and two hands busy at work. This ramped his fear levels back up and he ran in the other direction until he collapsed, exhausted, and passed out.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

The Citadel - 2175

Lucius awoke with a jolt. He was groggy, sore, starving and for a moment didn't know where he was, until the memory of the previous day came flooding back. He was slumped against a wall near a dimly-lit, four-way intersection of cramped corridors, about a metre and a half across. The ceiling was also unusually low, he noticed, only as high as the corridor was wide. More of a tunnel than a corridor, really. He could walk comfortably around, but an adult would need to stoop to get around.

A green four-legged monster came around the corner and started walking towards him. Lucius gasped and, unable to find a shred of energy to defend himself biotically or even enough breath to scream, he curled into ball and hid his face. The monster approached slowly until it was right in front of him. It paused and then, without so much as glancing down at the boy, awkwardly stepped over him and continued on it's way. Lucius remained in his ball until the echo of the scraping footsteps disappeared down the path.

The silence was broken by a painful groan of his stomach. He was hungry, hungrier than he had ever been. While a big part of him wanted to remain in this corridor in the foetal position, terrified as he was of what could be around any corner, the pain in his gut wouldn't let him. He slowly picked himself up and started walking.

He didn't know if he was going to the right way, he didn't even know what 'the right way' meant in this situation. He tried to go in as straight a path as he could, peering down every fork to see anything different, but all he saw was more and more thin, low corridors. Whatever this place was, it was big and… confusing. The layout made no sense to him, and there were no maps or even markings on any of the walls to indicate where he might be.

He came across several more of the monsters as he wandered. Some were busy at at a wall where they had somehow slid back a panel and were doing… something to the machinery hidden behind it. Others were walking the paths like him. He avoided them all, doubling back to avoid the stationary ones and ducking down an adjoining path to avoid the walking ones. Many should have seen him, must have seen them, but made no indication they were even aware of his presence.

Eventually he looked down a side path and saw a ramp heading up with a brighter light source shining down. He cautiously approached it and headed up to peak at what lay above. When he entered the underground labyrinth he had been in an area consisting of large, flat building only a few stories tall, but the buildings here were much taller, stretching high into the sky. High above him cars flew through the air in dense but coordinated streams. The most surprising thing, however, was the people.

Were they people? The warehouse district he was in earlier seemed deserted, but this area had dozens of… things, some walking around, some gathered in small groups, some coming in and out of the many buildings surrounding him. They all had two arms, two legs and a head, like people, they moved roughly like people and wore clothes like people. They even seemed to be speaking to each other like people, though Lucius couldn't understand what they were saying. It seemed to be a language, or languages, but filled with sounds he had never heard before and didn't think he could ever reproduce. In many ways they seemed like people, and yet they were completely unlike any people he had ever seen.

There were tall beings with hard shell-like plates covering their face and every other part of them Lucius could see. They had a row of sharp-looking spines protruding from the back of their head, two more spines coming from the backs of their knees and three fingers on each hand tipped with dangerous talons. Then there were others, almost as tall, with big black eyes and thin limbs and bodies. A third kind looked almost human, if not for their blue or purple skin and some kind of strange crests instead of hair.

Lucius ducked back down the ramp and waited for several minutes, not sure if he should continue. Soon his hunger overcame his trepidation and he ventured out into the street. He walked cautiously amongst the strange beings, trying not to stare for too long at any one individual. Unlike the creatures in the labyrinth below, these 'people' did notice him. Many stared briefly back at him, returning his gaze, but soon went back to whatever it was they were doing.

Lucius turned a corner and saw a small stall manned by one of the thin, black-eyed creatures. His hungry eyes were immediately drawn to a display of small, individually wrapped, bar-shaped food items. He had learned to read at the orphanage many years ago and while he hadn't had much practice the past 5 years, he thought he remembered enough. The writing on these packages, however, was completely unfamiliar to him. Among other symbols, slightly more than half of the bars had a large blue symbol prominently displayed, while the others had a yellow symbol in place of it.

Lucius picked up one of the yellow bars and began to examine it more closely when the creature snatched it out of his hand. It pointed at the yellow symbol and spoke rapidly, then pointed at the blue symbol on another bar before offering it to Lucius. Lucius, confused, reached out to take the bar, only for the creature to snatch it back again. Now it was pointing at a small device on it's wrist. It looked at Lucius' wrists and, seemingly not happy with what he was seeing, began shooing the boy away.

Lucius didn't understand what was happening or what the creature wanted but was too hungry to leave empty handed. He grabbed an armful of the blue bars and ran. There was shouting behind him and all the creatures around him stared as he ran past them. He ran back into the relative safety of the tunnels until he was sure he wasn't being followed before stopping to examine his bounty.

After unwrapping the bars he decided that they were almost definitely food. They looked strange, and smelled and tasted even stranger, but he ate them all quickly anyway. After his meal he sat for a while, not quite knowing what to do with himself. He considered trying to find his way back to the warehouses and begging for forgiveness, but he thought that if he wasn't in trouble before he definitely would be now. Besides, he didn't think he'd be able to find his way back there through the maze of tunnels. He was alone, in a strange place he didn't understand filled with 'people' he didn't understand. He held his knees to his body, making himself as small as possible, and cried.

* * *

The Citadel - 2176

Garrus Vakarian was almost a C-Sec detective. Almost. He had it on good authority that his promotion was forthcoming and that soon he would be assigned real cases to work instead of just an area to patrol. So he walked through a quiet Zakera neighbourhood, content that it was for one of the last times.

The neighbourhood of Zakera ward he was currently patrolling was nothing special, mostly residential with some shopping areas dotted around. It wasn't a wealthy area, but fairly safe. All in all a nice place to live, but a boring place to patrol. It was so quiet that usually C-Sec didn't usually have an active presence here, but there had been a spate of shoplifting recently. A human youth had apparently taken to stealing food and other low-value items from some of the local stores.

He must be one of the station's homeless, Garrus thought. Homelessness wasn't a major problem on the Citadel, but it still existed to some degree. Most of them, however, managed to get help from one of several charities. There were usually enough food banks and shelters on each ward so that even the downtrodden didn't starve on the Citadel and, being a space station with an artificial climate, the cold or other extreme weather wasn't a problem either. Which made it odd that someone was stealing food, regularly enough that they were probably living off of it but not enough to be selling it for any meaningful sums. Odd, but not unheard of.

Also odd was that the thief had been seen escaping into the keeper tunnels. These were a vast network of cramped tunnels that ran underneath each of the wards which the keepers used to get around while they did whatever it was that they do. While at first glance they seemed like a smuggler's wet dream and great way for criminals to get around unseen, there were a few problems with them. Firstly, they were small. They were the perfect size for a keeper to get around, which meant that adults of all species, except the Volus, had to awkwardly stoop or crouch to get through. It would be especially uncomfortably for a turian like Garrus. More importantly though, was the fact that they were almost impossible to navigate. Secondly, all the tunnels looked the same and the network seemed to be designed at random, no pattern had ever been found. More than that, they changed. Every few weeks keepers would somehow rearrange the tunnels so that any effort to comprehensively map them was doomed to failure. Anything left in the tunnels, be it contraband or simply some markings on the walls to help navigation would disappear when left unattended for a few hours, presumably removed by the keepers. Their one saving grace was that there were enough entrances dotted around that if (or when) one did get lost in them, you could just wander around aimlessly and eventually find a way out in an hour or two. Or three. Still, most Citadel citizens had an almost superstitious unease about them, so only the truly desperate even tried to use them.

Mid-way into his shift Garrus heard a shout, then a crash as something fell to the floor and saw a small human run out of a nearby shop carrying a full backpack. "Get him! Stop him!" shouted the Asari merchant as Garrus ran past her shop in pursuit. He followed the boy around the corner, drawing his pistol and taking aim.

"Freeze! Kid, stop!" The boy did not stop, didn't even slow down or look behind him. Garrus briefly thought about taking the shot, but hesitated. So far the thief had only made off with food and other necessities. This didn't excuse anything, the law was the law and if he was really in need there was help available but still, it didn't quite seem worth shooting over. With Garrus' aim as good as it was he was almost certain he could have successfully shot to wound only, but almost certain wasn't certain enough.

"Damn it" he sighed, holstering his gun and taking off after the thief. The human was fast, but Garrus was fast too, and he had much longer legs to help him catch up. He was a few seconds away from catching him when the boy leapt into the air. He made it about a few metres into the air, grabbing onto a wall before pushing off the wall, sending him even higher and onto a wide walkway, about two stories above the ground and running perpendicular to the road they had been on. "I didn't know humans could do that," Garrus muttered, until he noticed the faint glow of biotics around the acrobatic thief.

The now frustrated cop ran underneath the wide walkway to the staircase on the opposite side and climbed the flights of stairs as fast as he could. Coming to the top out of breath, he looked around but saw no sign of where the kid had gone. A nearby salarian, looking mildly surprised, pointed Garrus back down to the ground floor road he had come from, letting Garrus catch a glimpse of the thief turning a corner fifty metres back down the direction they had come from. The boy had jumped up to the higher path, only to jump back down and double back when he saw Garrus take the bait.

"Great," muttered Garrus, still panting, "outsmarted by a human child. Some detective I'll make."

* * *

The Citadel - 2178

Miranda Lawson and her partner Paul looked over their briefing data one last time before heading out. Their target: Lucius, a fifteen year old human vagrant on the citadel. Their mission: capture alive at all costs, but preferably discreetly. According to the reports he had escaped from Cerberus custody three years earlier and had evaded recapture ever since, which was quite impressive for a child. Or a teenager, as he now was. Of course it was always going to be hard to find him, considering he was one person out of over thirteen million and that this was the Citadel, centre of council power and inter-species cooperation. Cerberus had precious few contacts here, and were severely limited in how many men they could put on the street without attracting attention.

Another complicating factor was that the target was a powerful biotic. Just how powerful they weren't sure, their data listed his power level as 'unknown', which was… troubling. The report was fairly light on details of his life before the escape (apparently Miranda and Paul didn't 'need to know'), but surely if Cerberus had previously had him in custody they would have been able to ascertain his biotic potential? That and the fact that he had managed to escape at the age of twelve in the first place gave Miranda an uneasy feeling, but she ignored it. Miranda and Paul had been on dozens of missions like this since she joined up and they were both unscathed so far.

Miranda had joined Cerberus seven years ago, when she was just sixteen. After a few years of training and education, she had been put into the field with Paul as her mentor. Paul was fifteen years older and had had got her through some tough scrapes, though after a brief learning curve Miranda was more than able to hold her own. In fact, their reputation as one of Cerberus' more effective teams for this kind of work was as much Miranda's doing as his, but Miranda still relied on his cool head and years of experience. If she were honest with herself, she saw him as something of a replacement father figure, but she was rarely that honest with herself.

After three years of sporadic sightings and stolen C-Sec reports, Cerberus finally had an opportunity to bring their former subject back into the fold. They had long known that Lucius was surviving off petty thievery and probably living in the keeper tunnels, the trouble was that he seemed to pop up all over the citadel at random. There would be a sighting of him at the outer edge of Zakera ward one week, then near the Presidium on Kithoi ward the next. Their best guess was that he couldn't properly navigate the keeper tunnels much better than anyone else, and that once a week or so he would get lost in them for a few hours before finding an entrance that brought him to an entirely different part of the citadel. Cerberus couldn't predict where he would next appear and didn't have the manpower to cover everywhere.

After three years, though, Lucius seemed to have settled into something of a routine. He would still reappear in different areas of the Citadel at random, but now he would stay in each area for a few weeks before moving on, unless he had too close a call with C-Sec or an angry shopkeeper. There had just been a sighting in a Tayseri neighbourhood that was probably him (though with more and more humans living on the Citadel it was becoming more difficult to confirm this), so Miranda and Paul were sent out to stakeout the area. Hopefully they would spot him before he moved on. Sounded like a bit of a long shot, but it was their best chance yet.

Miranda and Paul got out of their aircar and separated. Miranda settled on a nearby bench with a drink and pretended to read something on her omni-tool, while Paul browsed some nearby shop windows. They were in a mid-sized square dotted with a few cafes and a couple of convenience stores, with a keeper tunnel entrance tucked away in a nearby alley. Just the sort of place Lucius frequented.

Today was the third day of their stakeout, but their patience was about to pay off. Miranda spotted someone matching Lucius' description head into one of the convenience stores. He was a young human male, long black hair and blue eyes. Skinny, maybe even gaunt but not to the point of being emaciated. He looked a bit younger than your average fifteen year old, but then Lucius always was small for his age. Miranda headed over for a closer look, getting in line for the next door cafe to avoid standing out. A display in one corner of the convenience store suddenly fell down, and while the shopkeeper was distracted the boy inside began smoothly stuffing items into his bag at the other end of the shop. "I think we've got him," Miranda whispered into her comm.

Before the shopkeeper had finished reseting the display, the boy was out the door. "He's certainly got better at this," thought Miranda. She followed him discreetly, from a distance. The boy headed towards the secluded alley, coming to the entrance to the keeper tunnels he had emerged from minutes earlier only to find a man standing in his way.

"Lucius?" asked Paul placatingly. The boy's eyes widened. "It's okay son, I just want to talk," Paul took a step forwards, arms open and hands empty. Lucius gripped the strap on his bag tighter, but otherwise didn't move. "No one wants to hurt you. We just want to take you home, where it's safe. You don't have to live out here anymore." As he took another step towards the boy, Lucius dropped his bag and exploded with blue light, leaping clear over Paul and landing several metres behind him, and took off at a sprint.

"Damn it Miranda, it's definitely him and he's on the run, heading north. I'm going after him, try and head him off," Paul yelled into his comm as he ran after Lucius. Obviously there wasn't really a north on a space station, but convention treated the citadel tower as the north pole for navigation purposes.

Paul sprinted after Lucius, following him around a few corners until they headed up a staircase leading to a landing several metres above the square. Paul almost had him in arm's reach and drew a small device from a holster on his hip: an injector loaded with a powerful sedative. Lucius, feeling the man closing on him, lashed out with a clumsy throw. He mostly missed Paul, but the telekinetic energy winged him on the arm sending him spinning to the floor.

Lucius paused to catch his breath and was about to continue fleeing when something stopped him. This wasn't the usual angry shopkeeper or C-Sec officer he was running from, this man knew his name. He wanted to take him 'home'. Lucius had grown to like his new the life, the independence and the freedom of it. No more spending years locked in a room and being told what to do with every minute of his life. His current existence was socially isolating in the extreme, but he never really had any friends or anyone to talk with at the lab anyway so it barely registered to him as a problem. An anger rose in him towards the man now quickly getting back to his feet. Lucius picked him up with a blue wave of his hand, held him a metre off the ground and slowly began to squeeze.

Miranda had been tracking Paul's movements with her omni-tool and had seen him heading up the stairs. Using her biotics, she jumped up to a balcony above one of the cafes, then up to another one before jumping across to land silently on the landing some distance behind Lucius. She made no visible reaction to seeing her partner at the boy's mercy, but internally she began to panic. She drew her gun and took aim. Orders were to take him in alive at all costs, but her partner's life was not a cost she was willing to pay. Paul caught sight of her and groaned through gritted teeth, "Miranda!"

She fired.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The Citadel - 2178

Lucius saw Paul look behind him as he groaned out a name, and began to turn around just in time to throw off Miranda's aim. The bullet, which would have gone through his spine, right between the shoulder blades, instead went through his left upper arm. In shock from the pain and switching his focus to raising his barrier, he dropped Paul to the ground, who gasped for breath as the pressure around his chest abated. Lucius looked from Miranda to Paul and back again, then with a growl threw Paul against the wall before rounding on Miranda. The young Cerberus agent looked on in shock as her partner and mentor flew headfirst into the hard wall and crumpled into a heap on the floor, leaving a smear of blood and bone and brain where he had impacted.

She snapped herself out of her horror just in time to dive out of the way of a telekinetic shove. She fired off a few more rounds, then dropped the gun when the bullets bounced harmlessly off Lucius' biotic barrier. She activated her omni-tool and prepared to try and overload the boy's biotic amplifier, pausing to roll backwards out of the way of another biotic attack. With her back against the railing over a long drop to the square below, she activated the overload program just as Lucius charged his final attack. This one landed, sending Miranda forcefully into the railing and then spinning over the top. Winded from the impact and still in shock over the loss of her partner Miranda struggled to focus her own biotic abilities enough to slow her fall as the ground rushed up to meet her.

Lucius collapsed to his knees, blood pouring from his wound. His shoulder burned, and now the back of his neck burned as well. The adrenaline coursing through his body still masking most of the pain, he got up and looked over the edge to see Miranda lying sprawled motionless on the ground below, with a small crowd starting to gather around and stare. He ran back down the stairs and back towards the comfort of the keeper tunnels.

Wandering the tunnels for what felt like hours, he was getting slower and his vision was starting to blur. Finally finding another exit, he dragged himself up to the surface and collapsed.

* * *

After what felt like only a moment, Lucius awoke. For the first time in years he was in an actual bed. He took stock of his surroundings; he was in the corner of the room with several empty beds in a row along one wall. He could see several machines sitting on wheeled carts against the wall opposite him, he didn't know what they were for but they reminded him of the lab he had been kept in for so many years. Had his pursuers caught him after he passed out? There had to be more than just those two looking for him. His head felt foggy, but he sat up and tried to get out of the bed anyway, when he noticed his clothes were gone and he was instead wearing some kind of gown. He heard footsteps; someone was approaching from the far end of the room. Soon they came into view from behind the partition and he saw his captor: a woman with dark red hair.

"Oh good, you're awake. How are you feeling?" Lucius sat dumbly on the bed in reply. "My name is Dr. Michel, can you tell me your name?" She didn't already know him? So, she wasn't one of the people looking for him? Unless this was some kind of trick.

"Lucius," he replied cautiously.

"Well Lucius, it seems you were shot. Can you tell me what happened?"

"Someone shot me."

"Yes, of course… well you're lucky that I found you a few blocks from here when I did. The bullet didn't hit an artery, but you still lost a lot of blood. I've given you a transfusion and sealed the wound. You should be okay now, but please go easy the next few days, you will still be a bit weak. Can I call your parents for you? Or… someone else? I'm sure people are worrying about you."

"No. No… calls. I should go." Lucius stood up, a little uneasy on his feet, and looked down at his robe. "Where are my clothes?"

"Are you sure there's no one I can call?" Lucius shook his head. "Well I'll just go get you clothes now then." The doctor walked out and returned a moment later with a small pile of neatly folded clothes. "I had them washed, they were a bit… bloody. I'm afraid there's a hole in the shirt sleeve, but you probably knew that already. Oh, but before you change please feel free to use the shower here. In fact I insist." She wrinkled her nose slightly as she handed him the clothes.

"Umm, okay, I guess." She led him to the bathroom and Lucius had his first proper shower since arriving in the Citadel. It was blissful. After the shower he dressed and went to leave, but stopped at the desk where the doctor sat first.

"I, uh, I mean, thank you Doctor, but I have to go now." There were probably still people looking for him, either the humans wanting to take him 'home', or C-Sec. They seemed pretty angry when they caught him stealing, he imagined they'd be angrier if they figured out he had killed two people.

"I still wish you'd let me call someone for you, but fine. If you ever need anything you can always come here for help, Lucius, just try not to get shot again." Lucius nodded and left. As he walked back onto the street he realised that that was probably the longest conversation he had had since he got to the Citadel. He still couldn't speak to the strange people that lived here, and while he had seen a few humans here and there, he hadn't really spoken to any of them. They didn't seem like they wanted to talk anyway.

He looked around. This part of the citadel looked like lots of other parts, but he couldn't remember this area specifically. He wandered around for a bit, looking for an keeper tunnel entrance and somewhere to find a meal. He also needed a new bag, he had left his old one behind after he was shot. And maybe a new shirt as well, he thought as he fingered the hole in his sleeve.

He saw a group of the blue women having a drink on a platform overlooking the path he was on. They spoke for a bit, then moved off in the other direction. Lucius decided to look up there, people often seemed to gather around areas near shops. He charged his biotics and tried to leap up to the platform, it was only a few metres above and he had done this many times. This time, however, he barely made it half a metre into the air. He tried again, rising only a little higher. Confused and a little scared, he jumped again putting his all into it. He just barely managed to grip onto the edge of the platform and, unable to pull himself up, fell back downwards, the impact causing pain in his still healing arm. In the back of his neck he also felt a mild burning sensation.

"The doctor did say I might be a little weak," he thought, suspecting there was more to it than that. "I guess I'll have to find some stairs instead."

* * *

The Citadel - 2183

A lot of things had changed for Lucius over the past five years. He had grown into a man, just slightly over six feet but still very thin. He didn't spend much time in the keeper tunnels anymore, he was too tall now to be comfortable moving through them. Instead he slept in various other maintenance areas of the Citadel; spending the first few years being constantly on the move and exploring and given him a detailed knowledge of many secret and hidden places throughout the Citadel. He still moved around a lot to avoid the people chasing him but he moved intentionally now, to specific hiding spots he knew of instead of just running through the tunnels and popping up somewhere random.

The great advantage to this change was that he was now able to stockpile supplies. He now had food, clothes etc. secreted away in over a dozen places, no longer living hand to mouth. In fact he no longer stole from shops at all. By following a delivery car back to its origin one day he had discovered that there were warehouses full of food and supplies. The security here was tighter than a simple corner store, but still relatively light. Out of curiosity (and a little boredom) he had on a couple of occasions broken into one of the more well-guarded warehouses only to find no food at all, just crates of electronics and weapons which were useless to him. It was the more lightly defended warehouses that held the necessities of life. Usually all he had to do was knock out a guard or two and he could take as much as he could carry.

The disadvantage to his move out of the tunnels was that he more frequently ran into other people. He was more confident now at walking the streets, he had become quite proficient at not attracting attention and with more humans around now than ever before people rarely gave him a second glance, or even a first glance. When he ran into people in the quieter maintenance areas however, people were downright hostile. Several times he had come across a small group, speaking in hushed voices and making some kind of trade, who pointed guns at him as soon as they saw him. He would run away from those people. His barriers would protect him if they decided to start shooting, but fighting them just wasn't worth the risk when they had nothing he wanted.

His biotics had not yet fully recovered after his run-in with his pursuers five years ago; they had gradually improved since that day but still weren't at the level they were before. For a long time he had been frustrated at his weakened state and at his lack of an explanation for it. His arm healed quickly and now there was barely a scar there, and yet the damage to his biotics was apparently more serious. The frustration had faded with time, though. He had adapted to his new situation well and his biotics were slowly but surely getting stronger. Another few years, he guessed, they would be back to their peak.

He had had a couple of more run-ins with his pursuers since the shooting, but had become instinctively cautious, even paranoid to avoid them and hadn't seen any sign of them the last few years. He still had no real friends; he moved around too often for anyone to really remember or recognise him and though there were more humans around now who mostly spoke his language he rarely approached them. He couldn't communicate with the non-humans, and as the people chasing him were exclusively human he was reluctant to trust his own kind as well.

The only exception to this was Dr. Michel, or Chloe as she had insisted he start to call her. They weren't friends exactly, but every few months he would stop in for a shower and a brief conversation, and a few times had gone to get patched up again. Nothing too serious, only a cut on his hand or an injured ankle from a fall. As per her instructions he had avoided getting shot again. He even gave her some bottles of pills he had found during a warehouse raid, he thought they resembled some he had seen at her clinic and so grabbed a few to gift to her. She didn't seem as happy with them as he had hoped, but thought she appreciated the gesture anyway.

Lucius was sitting in one of his hideouts eating a snack and considering another visit to the doctor, when he heard rushed, uneven footsteps coming from below. He crawled out of the low entrance to the ventilation pump room he was in and onto a metal walkway above a secluded alleyway. Below him someone was limping along clutching her side. Lucius had seen these kind of people a few times, but never from this close; there were very few of them on the Citadel. He was pretty sure they were robots, though not the short, fat robots he saw more often. This one was taller, only a little shorter than he was, with three-fingered hands and legs that bent strangely. Her face was a curved pane of opaque glass, with the barely visible glow of two eyes darting around in panic.

An alien voice said something from around the corner, and injured girl ducked behind a crate. A man appeared in the alley, a turian, as Lucius had learned they were called. With a pistol held out in front him he walked briskly down the alley. He was clearly looking for the girl, and something told Lucius it wasn't to help her. Lucius' usual instinct in this situation was to run or hide and not to intervene, but this time something stopped him. Perhaps it was out of empathy, he certainly knew what it was like to be chased by armed men, or perhaps it was out of a repressed sense of loneliness. Whatever the reason, Lucius dropped down behind the turian just as he was approaching the crate which hid his target.

Tali hid behind the crate, knowing that this was likely to be her final moments. She could hear the footsteps of her turian hunter quickly approaching, he would soon find her and she couldn't run anymore. She had taken a glancing hit on her side, which for her was probably worse than a more accurate hit. Instead of a small puncture on either side of her body from a bullet entering and exiting, there was a long, open wound and her suit had been torn open. Medi-gel had stopped the bleeding but it was too late, infection had already begun to set in. Between the blood loss, the pain, the growing infection and the painkillers and antibiotics her suit had automatically administered she was weak and groggy. She couldn't run any further and there was no where else to hide. The turian was almost on her.

"You're just delaying the inevitable," called out her attacker, "come out now and I promise I'll make it… What the, where did you come from?"

Tali peeked out and saw the turian with his back to her, now facing a… human? She had never met a human before. The things she had heard about them were not good, but then people said bad things about quarians as well so she didn't put to much stock in that. Was this her chance to make a run for it? If only she could find the energy to get back up

"You been here long? You see a quarian run through here? Help me out and I'll make it worth you while." The turian was talking to the human but the human made no reply, he just stood there mute.

"Well if you're not going to help then just get out of here." The human did not leave, instead he took a step forward and the glow of biotics formed around his arms.

"I don't have time for this," said the turian as he opened fire on the biotic from close range. The bullets glanced off a biotic barrier and the turian was thrown into the wall with a crack. The turian staggered, dazed, and was thrown into the opposite wall with another crack. He dropped his pistol which slid across the floor towards Tali's crate. This was her chance, she crawled towards the gun. Another biotic attack slammed the turian onto the floor. Tali reached the gun and took aim. Her pursuer was sprawled on the ground now, unconscious and harmless, but that didn't matter to her. He had almost killed her, and had succeeded in killing the crew of the ship which had taken her for her pilgramage. She pulled the trigger once, a single shot to the head to make sure he didn't get up again.

She stood up shakily and looked at her human rescuer. "Umm, thanks. I don't know why you helped me, but thanks." The human said nothing, but used his facial muscles to stretch his mouth closer to the sides of his face. It was not a gesture she understood, but he lowered his hands and let his biotic glow dissipate, a more universal sign that he wasn't hostile.

"I've been injured, I need a doctor. Do you know where the nearest hospital is?"

"Hello," the human replied.

"Yes, uhh, hi. I'm sorry to ask for more help but I really need it. Is there a hospital around here?"

The human said nothing, but tilted his head slightly to the side. Another gesture she didn't recognise.

"Okay, I guess I'll find one on my own then…" Tali turned away and took a few steps before stumbling and leaning on the crate she had just been cowering behind. The human quickly came beside her and helped her up, putting her arm around his neck.

"You're hurt, I'll take you to Dr. Michel, she'll know what to do."

"Yes! A doctor, thank you." Overcome with relief, Tali felt lighter than air. She then noticed the tingling feeling on her skin and the faint blue glow around her. The human was using a biotic field to make her lighter, which with his help made walking much easier. After a few blocks they came to a small clinic with the universal symbol for medicine on the front. Not quite the hospital she had in mind, but it would do.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Citadel - 2183

Dr. Michel sat in her clinic with not much to do. She had no appointments for the rest of the day. Her business used to be based on human patients who preferred to see a human doctor, and until recently there weren't many of those at the larger hospitals. She had been one of the first, before she was fired for giving away supplies for free. With more and more humans migrating to the Citadel, however, that was changing. Humans were still a minority, but an increasingly large minority. Now all hospitals had a few human doctors on staff, and alien doctors were becoming more familiar with human biology. If things kept as they were she would soon have to reapply at a hospital and accept the bureaucracy that came with that, or leave the station all together.

She heard the door open and jerked her head up in surprise. She saw Lucius entering with a female quarian hanging off him. She was clearly a little out of it, and soon the doctor noticed the blood-stained tear in her suit. A quarian! Dr. Michel had been learning more about various alien species' physiologies but knew little about quarians, she had been focusing on other species who were better represented on the Citadel. What she did know was that quarians were hyper-vulnerable to infections. A suit tear was problematic in itself, an open wound was potentially disastrous.

"Oh dear. Bring her to me Lucius, quickly. I have a surgery room that should be sterile enough. Hopefully." Lucius handed her over the Dr. Michel who led her through a door to a small adjoining room with another door on the opposite side. She sat the quarian down and began to help her out of her suit. The suit was filthy, covered in blood in places and in god-knows-what in others. The small room they were in was equipped with decontaminating lasers to kill bacteria and the like, but it might not be able to cope with the nook and crannies and accumulated dirt on the suit.

As she was helping the girl with her helmet she caught sight of Lucius peering wide-eyed in through the window in the door. She shooed him away. The quarian was wearing a tight jumpsuit-like garment underneath the suit which could stay on, but it still seemed somehow improper to have the young man watching. She finished removing the quarian's suit, sealed it away, then put on a gown, gloves and a full face mask before activating the decontamination lasers and bringing the injured girl into the surgery.

Thankfully the wound was relatively minor. It wasn't deep enough to affect any internal organs (especially lucky as Dr. Michel wasn't completely sure what quarian internal organs even were), so all she had to do was numb the area, clean the wound thoroughly then seal it up. The girl, named Tali as she learned, was still feverish and groggy, but mostly lucid throughout. After closing the wound she administered some stronger antibiotics and let her rest. All she could do now was let the antibiotics do their work and hope the infection wasn't too bad.

Dr. Michel walked back into the main clinic room carrying the quarian's suit in a box. Tali had asked for it back so she could start repairing the tear, but first the doctor would have to clean it as much as possible before allowing it into the surgery. She saw Lucius slumped in a chair; he quickly stood up as she entered the room.

"She should be okay now, but she'll need to stay in that room while her body fights the infection. We'll let her rest for now and I'll check on her in a few hours."

Lucius looked down at the suit Dr. Michel was carrying with a look of awe on his face. "There was a person under there."

"Yes, a quarian… Have you not met a quarian before?" Lucius shook his head. "I thought… is Tali not your friend?"

"I only met her today"

"Oh… What happened to her? It looks like she was shot."

"Some turian was chasing her, I think he shot her. But he's dead now"

"Okay, well I'm just going to pretend I didn't ask. Come on, you can help me clean this suit up"

* * *

That night was a rough one for Tali. Her fever picked up considerably and the doctor gave her a sedative to help her rest. By morning the fever had started to come down; she was still far from 100% but was well enough to start repairing her suit. In the early evening she emerged from the surgery fully dressed, still running a fever but steady on her feet.

"Thank you for everything doctor. I don't have many credits but here, take this," Tali pressed a few buttons on her omni-tool.

"I really wish you'd stay at least one more night to recover more fully, Tali," replied Dr. Michel.

"No, I've already stayed too long. I've got valuable information about the attack on Eden Prime and there's bound to be others willing to kill me to get it. I've tried taking it to the council but they don't have time to meet with a lowly quarian," Tali said bitterly, "maybe I could try and find the Shadow Broker. He'd want this information and in return I could ask for his protection."

"Eden Prime? I heard that was the Geth? Well that certainly sounds dangerous, but if you're sure that's what you want I believe Fist works for the Shadow Broker. He runs a club on this ward, Chora's Den."

"Sounds like a good place to start. Where is this club?"

"Oh it's sort of… actually maybe Lucius could show you the way. Lucius, you know where Chora's Den is, don't you?"

Tali turned, only just realising that Lucius was sitting off to the side. Had he been there all day?

"Yes I know it, never been inside though. Does Tali want to go there? Why would she want to go there?" asked Lucius, addressing Dr. Michel rather than Tali.

"I need to find the Shadow Broker. I know it might be dangerous, but I'm already in danger," said Tali.

Lucius looked at her blankly for a moment, then turned to Dr. Michel, "What did she say?"

"What, you don't understand her?" said Dr. Michel, "Is you translator malfunctioning?"

"My… my what?"

Dr. Michel walked over and briefly touched both sides of Lucius' face. "You aren't even wearing one, no wonder you can't understand her, where is your translator?"

"I don't… I don't have one. I think. What's a translator?"

"How do you not know what a translator is? You've been here for years. How did I not notice this? I mean, looking back I don't think I've ever seen you talk to anyone else, but still."

"You've been here for years without a translator?" added Tali, "How is that possible? How have you survived? And… you don't understand a word I'm saying."

"Why did you never get one?" continued Dr. Michel, "You don't even know what they are? But you must have seen people talking to each other, humans talking to other species?"

Lucius was shrinking further into his chair, feeling a lot like he was being interrogated. "I don't know, I mean I just thought people had learned the other languages. People know lots of things I don't."

Dr. Michel sighed, "Well I wish I had a spare to give you. Where do you even buy translators? I got mine at immigration control when I arrived and we used to give them to infants at the hospital I worked at, but I don't think I've seen them for sale anywhere. Everyone already has one."

Tali was a little curious as well, but also eager to get going. She had been stuck in the one room for over a day, constantly worrying that some armed thug would come bursting through the door at any moment. She was desperate to leave and find safer shelter. "Well we'll head for Chora's Den and see if we can find a translator on the way. If you're willing to lead the way, Lucius? Oh, I mean, can you ask him if he is willing?"

"Lucius, can you take Tali to Chora's Den? On the way maybe she can get a translator for you, so you can understand her. And everyone else," Dr. Michel asked.

"Umm okay. Yes."

* * *

Lucius led Tali and they were soon approaching Chora's Den. Lucius pointed towards it, "There. That's the place." They had found an electronics store on the way, selling omni-tools and the like, and had enquired about a translator but, as the salarian shopkeeper had said, "It's just not something we stock. I mean, everyone already has one don't they?"

Tali walked up to the bouncer, an enormous reptilian-looking thing, and began speaking. Both she and the bouncer were of course incomprehensible to Lucius, so he instead peered through the entrance and looked inside. The club was dimly lit, loud and crowded with several species. Many of the patrons and most of the staff were armed. Exactly the kind of place he had spent years avoiding. Soon Tali was being led inside, but he didn't follow. "I'll just wait here. I'll meet you after," he said timidly.

A few long minutes went by before Tali emerged. Lucius had retreated to a nearby alley, and so waved and pulsed his biotics to attract her attention. Tali rushed over. "It worked! I've got a meeting with the Shadow Broker in a few hours!" Tali seemed excited, and so Lucius smiled. "Of course you have no idea what I'm saying, but thanks for helping me find the place!"

"It went well?" asked Lucius.

"I think so! Well, I still have to make it through the next few hours until the meeting, and hope that the meeting goes well. Actually it might be handy to have a biotic who knows the area around just in case," Tali replied, more thinking aloud than answering the question. "Come with me, let's go find the meeting place. It should be an alley a few blocks from here." She beckoned for Lucius to follow and they headed off.

They soon found the meeting place, and with plenty of time left to spare, decided to get something to eat. They found a place with some sealed turian smoothies, a sort of pre-made protein shake, for Tali and some other snacks for Lucius and sat down at a nearby table. They ate their food in silence. As the meeting time approached Tali began to feel nervous. She hoped this was her chance to finally get out of this mess, but with the Shadow Broker anything was possible. She wished she had never found that recording. She felt guilty. Several other quarians, the crew of the ship that carried her away from the fleet, were already dead. Now she was taking this human into danger as well, and yet she hadn't even hesitated when she asked him to be her guide.

She looked over at Lucius, who was looking around at the people nearby uneasily. 'He must be nervous about the upcoming meeting as well,' she thought. She tried to talk to him, miming some small talk about whether he liked the food etc. Lucius tried to mime back a response. "No Lucius, my translator is fine so I can understand you, you don't need to mime." He looked back at her confused. She sighed, a little frustrated, but continued the two-way mimed conversation until it was time and they headed to the alley.

* * *

A little after the agreed upon time, two salarians and a turian came walking down the alley. The turian spoke with Tali for a bit; Lucius couldn't understand any of it of course and so was caught off guard when things very quickly turned violent. The salarians who were hanging back drew their pistols and Tali threw a small object in their direction.

Lucius took a step closer to Tali and summoned a barrier around them both. The small object exploded sending the two salarians to the ground, while the turian opened fire. The bullets bounced off the barrier, but Lucius dragged them both to some cover anyway. With his barrier stretched to cover both of them he wouldn't be able to maintain it for long under fire. As they crouched behind some crates Tali drew the pistol she had taken from her previous attacker. The turian was running backwards to cover himself when Lucius telekinetically pushed him into the alley wall. As he staggered Tali stripped his shields and shot him, the bullets ripping through his minimal armour.

The two salarians had recovered and began taking shots at them from behind cover. After a few moments of exchanging shots one of the salarians threw a grenade of their own, but Lucius managed biotically catch it midway and send it back towards them. The salarians dived out from behind their cover to avoid the blast, Lucius again threw one against the wall, where his relatively soft salarian skull hit a pipe and caved in. Tali stripped the other's shields and took aim with her pistol when a shot rang out from behind them. The salarian fell dead, so Lucius and Tali turned to see a heavily armed group: three humans, a turian and a krogan.

Lucius, realising they were now on the wrong side of their cover, raised his barrier around both of them again and charged his biotics for the most powerful throw he could muster when one of them humans, a woman with red hair, stepped forward and lowered her rifle.

"Easy, we just want to talk. We're with the Systems Alliance, and if you're Tali then you have information we need."

Tali also lowered her pistol slightly. "Then talk." She made a gesture to Lucius and he let the glow surrounding his arms dissipate.

"We spoke to Dr. Michel, she said you had information about Eden Prime, about the Geth. People seem to be out to get you so I'm guessing that information is valuable. Show me what you have and I can promise you protection. Please, we were on Eden Prime and saw it first hand. We just want to stop it from happening anywhere else."

The other members of the new group lowered their guns as well, and the red-haired woman took a few steps towards Tali. "Okay, I guess I've got no choice but to trust you," Tali said. The woman took the final few steps to Tali and Lucius, only to walk smack into the invisible biotic barrier Lucius was still maintaining.

The other humans lifted their weapons again as the woman stumbled back a couple of steps, "Damnit would you ease up kid, we're on your side!" The krogan just chuckled.

"Sorry! He's just…" Tali said before turning back to her friend, "Lucius it's okay, they're… on our side, I think." He couldn't understand her but she held his hand in a placating gesture. Tali then walked towards the new group slowly, with her hand in front of her until she was satisfied the barrier was gone.

"See, all friends here," said the woman while rubbing her nose, "come on, let's move to the human embassy, we'll be safe there and we can look at what you have. I'm Commander Shepard, by the way."

"I'm Tali, but you already knew that didn't you, and this is Lucius."

"Yes, Dr. Michel mentioned you might have company. These are Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, Garrus Vakarian and Urdnot Wrex."

With introductions out of the way they headed for some Citadel Rapid Transit shuttles to take them to the presidium. With too many for one shuttle they split into two groups. The shuttles sat four comfortably, so Kaidan, Ashley and Wrex went in one and Shepard, Garrus, Tali and Lucius in another. Shepard wanted a chance to talk to Tali some more, and she didn't want Garrus and Wrex in a such a confined space together as they had been bickering ever since Wrex executed Fist. Also, Wrex took up two seats.

The shuttles took off, and after Tali explained how she got the info from a geth platform Garrus turned to Lucius. "You know, you don't really see many human biotics on the citadel, not outside of the military. You're a lot taller, but I'm pretty sure I had to chase you down a few years ago for robbery."

"He can't understand you," Tali interrupted, "he doesn't have a translator. I only met him yesterday but apparently he's been here for years without one."

"How does he not have a translator. He's never had one? If he's the kid I'm thinking of he's been here at least… seven years I think. I'll bet there's an interesting story behind that."

"He understands me though, right?" asked Shepard.

Lucius, after sitting through Tali's long story without understanding a word of it, perked up at hearing some words he knew. "Yes. English. I speak english," he nodded, smiling.

"Why don't you have a translator, Lucius?"

Lucius shrugged.

"Well you were wrong about that one, Garrus," Shepard said mockingly, "that wasn't an interesting story at all."

Garrus grunted in annoyance, then turned back to Lucius, "Well how did you get here then? We make sure everyone has one before they're admitted to the station. And what have you been doing all these years? And you don't understand a word I'm saying. Shepard, ask him some damn follow up questions!"

"Woah ease up Garrus, let's take it one investigation at a time. Saren first, mysterious human biotic second," Shepard said, still in a mocking tone.

"Well I can at least run his DNA through C-Sec, get an ID and see what records we have of him." Garrus reached for Lucius' hand, who quickly recoiled from him.

"Here, let me," said Tali, "I'm pretty curious myself." She took a small handheld device from Garrus. "Lucius, give me your hand, it'll just take a second and won't hurt a bit… Shepard can you tell him that this won't hurt a bit?"

"Lucius, this won't hurt a bit," said Shepard, intentionally unconvincingly. She was in a good mood. She finally had the evidence on Saren she needed and would soon be able to go after him. She was also very much looking forward to her next conversation with the Council.

Tali held the device against Lucius' hand as it quickly took a tiny sample. She was right, it didn't hurt a bit. She passed the device back to Garrus who checked the results.

"Well that's… odd. There's no record of him ever arriving at the Citadel, or of ever even being on the Citadel. No employment, no schooling, nothing."

"Shouldn't there at least be an arrest report from when you caught him seven years ago?" asked Shepard.

"No, I… I only said that I chased him. He, uhh, he got away."

"He got away! What was he, like ten years old at the time? I thought you were better than that Garrus," Shepard pretended to be disappointed.

"He's a biotic! He surprised me, and then he was jumping all over the place and… whatever, ancient history. Can you run his DNA through Alliance databases, you humans must have some record of him."

"Us humans? Yeah fine if it'll make you feel better, send me his data." She pressed a few buttons on her omni-tool, then a few moments passed in silence.

"Well! What does it say?"

"It's still searching. There's a lot of 'us humans' out there and a lot of records to go through. Oh, and looks like I accidentally flagged it as a low priority search. Oh boy, this might take a while. My bad," Shepard said sarcastically.

Garrus made a disgusted sound and spent the rest of the shuttle trip tapping has talons in frustration while Shepard and Tali chuckled, and Lucius smiled. Having only ever got half of the conversation he wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but apart from Garrus everyone seemed relaxed so he didn't worry too much. It was kind of nice just to be around people for a change

* * *

They soon arrived at the human embassy and met with Ambassador Udina and Captain Anderson. Lucius stayed at the back of the group. He understood most of the conversation this time as it was mostly the other humans talking but the evidence Tali had found was gibberish to him, and he got the sense that these were important people having an important conversation so decided to ask what the big deal about it was later.

Udina went to make arrangements for an emergency meeting with the Council, leaving the others in the room. Captain Anderson spoke up. "Shepard and I will join the Ambassador at the meeting, Alenko, Williams, you head back to the Normandy and inform the crew, I want it to be ready to leave as soon as possible. If this goes the way I think it will, the council will have no choice but to make Shepard a spectre, and we'll demand that they assign her to take Saren down. Hell, even if they don't we'll probably just do it anyway."

"Oorah, Captain," said Shepard.

"Captain Anderson, I know you might not be feeling very trusting of turians right now, but with your permission I'd like to join your crew. Saren is a disgrace to my people and I want to help stop him," said Garrus

"I want to help too. The Geth massacred my people, and no one knows them like I do. I can be useful," added Tali.

"Hmm. Shepard, what do you think?" asked Anderson.

"They have been useful so far, sir. And I'm sure the ambassador will be pleased to see us playing nice with the non-humans," answered Shepard.

"I'm not sure the Ambassador's opinion is a big priority for me, but fine. You two can head for the Normandy as well."

"Well if you're just giving away tickets I'll take one as well," said Wrex, "I can smell a big payday for me if I kill Saren."

"We're not paying you, Wrex," said Shepard.

"I meant the Shadow Broker, obviously. He hates Saren now. Besides, I'm pretty sure you couldn't afford me."

"Fine," interrupted Anderson, "but we'll be keeping a close eye on you. I'm going to go check on Udina, come join us when you are ready, Shepard." Anderson left the room.

"He'll keep a close eye on me, but not the turian?" asked Wrex in mock offence.

"I'm a decorated C-Sec officer, Wrex, while you just admitted to being a hitman for the head of the galaxy's underworld," answered Garrus.

"Boys, boys, if it makes you feel better I'm sure he doesn't trust either of you. I know I don't," said Shepard teasingly.

"Thanks, that means a lot to me," grumbled Wrex.

Shepard went for the door when Kaidan stopped her. "Uhh, commander? What about him?" he asked, pointing to Lucius who was now sitting on one of the couches, staring off at the view of the Presidium. He had entirely stopped trying to follow the conversation some time ago.

"Right, we'll send him home I guess? I don't really know where he lives but…" Shepards omni-tool dinged. "That's probably the Captain hurrying me up… oh, no thats the scan of Alliance records I set for Lucius' DNA. That's odd. It says here he died thirteen years ago, aged seven, at an orphanage on Terra Nova. That must be a mistake."

"Shepard, I saw him fight briefly in that alley. He's clearly not been trained, but even self taught he looks like a pretty powerful biotic."

"What, you want us to recruit him too?"

"No, I just mean maybe that's not a mistake. In the biotic community there are all sorts of horror stories about biotic children disappearing, taken somewhere for horrible experiments or just killed by anti-biotic zealots. I've always dismissed them as conspiracy theories, but maybe this is worth looking into. I certainly wouldn't put him in the field, like I said he hasn't been trained. And honestly he seems kind of spacey; I had half an eye on him during our conversation, I'm not sure he's… all there. Mentally."

"Oh yeah, that might just be 'cause he doesn't have a translator. He's probably used to tuning out when the aliens start speaking. Take him to Chakwas and get her to take a look at him, then we'll let Anderson decide what to do. Oh, and keep the whole 'legally dead' thing under wraps for now. And get the kid a damn translator while you're at it."

"Yes Commander."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

SSV Normandy

Shepard walked onto the Normandy, now her ship. Captain Anderson had made the announcement that he was stepping down while she was getting formally registered as a spectre, and so after a brief farewell with the man at the dock she boarded the ship. Her ship. It was only now sinking in that this was her crew, all these people would be looking to her for orders.

She knew that Anderson had been grooming her for command for some time, and she had certainly led dozens of ground missions, but this would be her first time commanding a ship. And not only was it a ship, it was a state of the art stealth vessel, the only one like it in the Alliance fleet, on a mission of vital importance.

Not only was the crew relying on her, her whole species was relying on her to succeed, perhaps even the whole galaxy. She really wished that Anderson was here. Abandoning those thoughts and focusing on the task at hand, she stepped up to the galaxy map to plot a course with her navigator.

"Congratulations on the promotion, Commander," said Pressly.

"To you as well, XO Pressly."

"Where are we headed?"

"The Artemis Tau cluster. We've got an ID on an asari matriarch that is one of Saren's lieautenants. We don't know where she is, but her daughter is at some prothean ruins somewhere in that cluster. We'll have to search the nearby systems for any activity."

"Yes sir. Is the daughter working for Saren as well?"

"Unknown, so let's be ready for anything. Are our new guests all on board?"

"Yes sir, the turian and the krogan are in the cargo bay, the quarian and the biotic are in the mess hall. Are you certain it's wise to have… non-alliance personnel on board?"

"I think they could be a great help, but let's keep them confined to the lower two decks. I don't want them wandering the CIC without a specific reason. Let's keep them out of engineering as well."

"Aye aye, sir. If that's all, Doctor Chakwas has asked to see you, something about the biotic."

"I'll go see her now then. Let me know when we are ready to push off."

* * *

Shepard walked down through the mess hall to the medbay, beckoning Alenko to follow.

"Alenko, I'm going to see what Chakwas has found about Lucius and I want you there, you're my resident biotic expert," said Shepard.

"I'm the only other biotic on board, you mean?" said Kaidan.

"That's not true, we've got Wrex now and he's a biotic, I just trust you a little bit more than him."

"I'm flattered, Commander," Kaidan said as they entered the medbay.

"So doctor, what's the story with our biotic vagrant?"

"Please Commander, Lieautenant, take a seat," Dr. Karin Chakwas said in a serious tone as she locked the medbay door. "I've confirmed your early scan, and as the lieutenant requested kept this between us. Lucius was born Lucius Fero on Terra Nova in 2163. His mother died in childbirth, or technically before childbirth while she was seven months pregnant, and they were able to save the child. She was unmarried and there is no father listed on the birth certificate, so when no one came forward the boy was given to an orphanage in the colony. Then, at age seven he apparently died."

"Except he seems quite alive to me," interrupted Shepard.

"Yes, all my scans confirm it," Dr. Chakwas said dryly, with a look that said she didn't care for being interrupted. Even to her commanding officer the doctor could be quite intimidating, and it paid not to piss off the person in charge of keeping you alive.

"I spoke to Lucius about it. He's not very talkative about the subject, but he says he was taken somewhere else by a group of humans, he mentioned a 'Dr. Kim' among others but without full names it will be hard to track them down, especially as I have a feeling they don't want to be found."

"What did they want with him?" asked Kaidan.

"From his description it seems they were studying him. During the medical scan I found several dozen tiny surgical scars, and a few larger ones, all over his body. My guess is from biopsies."

"Biopsies? What were they looking for?"

"I'm not sure, but based on the fact that it looks like they took a sample of near enough every part of him, I'd say they weren't sure either."

"Well this is certainly more horrifying than I was expecting. How did he end up on the Citadel, then?" asked Shepard.

"He said he 'escaped'. Wouldn't go into much more detail than that. He said he'd been on the Citadel for many years, hiding from humans trying to get him back the entire time. I don't know exactly how long he's been here, but the newest of the scars are about 8-10 years old."

"That tracks with what Garrus said, he thinks he saw him stealing some food about seven years ago."

"I'm more than a little concerned about what that's done to him. Physically he's healthy enough, underweight certainly but not to the point of being malnourished. But mentally? The social isolation over some pretty formative years? It's definitely something to keep an eye on. My greatest concern, however, is his biotics. Lieutenant Alenko, you told me he showed some promise when you briefly saw him in action?"

"Yes," answered Kaidan, "that was quite a powerful throw to take out that salarian. Bit of a lucky shot but still, if he gets some decent training he'll probably be better than I am."

"And what was that barrier?" added Shepard, "I've never seen a biotic extend their barrier over someone else like that. Can you do that Kaidan?"

"Well… it's certainly not unheard of, many biotics can do it but it's not really focused on in Alliance training. Barriers get harder to maintain the further you extend them past your body, so most human biotics can't maintain them that far out for long while under fire. But more than that, unlike shields, biotic barriers work both ways. So I could protect you with my barrier, but then neither of us would be able to shoot back. It's sometimes useful, but not often so our training focuses on other areas. When used personally we only extend our barriers an inch or so past our armour, so our weapons are technically outside of the barrier," explained Kaidan.

"The bit that concerns me," said Dr. Chakwas, "is that he did that without a biotic amp. I'm not a tech expert, but his amp is very old. At some point it was overloaded, and being just a civilian model it doesn't have the same protections our more modern military-grade amps do. It's completely non-functional now, and looks like it has been for some time."

"That's… not possible," said Kaidan.

"I thought biotics were pretty much useless without the amps?" said Shepard.

"They are," said Kaidan.

"My scan shows Lucius has roughly ten times the eezo nodules in his body compared to the average Alliance biotic. About seven times that of our very capable lieutenant here," said Dr. Chakwas.

"…Well shit, no wonder people are looking for him," said Shepard after a long silence.

"What are your orders Commander, what are we to do with him?" asked the doctor.

"Well I was going to hand him over to the human embassy, let them figure out what to do with him, but…" Shepard paused. These were exactly the kinds of tough decisions she would have to start making now that she was in command. She missed Anderson. "But given his value and that these mysterious people seem to be looking for him, we'll keep him with us for now. For all we know this is some kind of Alliance black ops thing. If someone is still looking for him they'll no doubt notice us running his DNA and checking his records, so if it is the Alliance I'm sure I'll hear from them soon. And if it's someone else, we'll deal with it when it comes to that."

Another long pause.

"So if he did all that without an amp," said Shepard, thinking out loud, "then what happens if we give him an amp?"

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," answered Kaidan, "it would be… he won't know his own strength. A gentle shove would turn into… carnage. He'd probably end up hurting himself, or more likely someone else. Hell, if that scan is right and we slap a military amp on him I'm concerned he'd bring down the ship. And really, we barely know this kid. I certainly don't trust him with that kind of power yet."

"Hmm. It could be risky, but we might need every edge we can get in this fight. Lieutenant, take him down to the quartermaster and get him an amp. Once we're underway I want you to only partially power it up and start training him. We'll gradually raise the amp level as he gets used to it, at your discretion."

"Yes sir, if you're sure. I was going to take him down there anyway to get a translator, the quartermaster should have a few spares."

Shepard and Alenko left the medbay and entered the mess. It was mostly empty at the moment, all navy personnel were busy performing their final duties preparing the ship to depart for what could be a long trip. At the table sat Lucius and Tali, not talking but just looking around, not really sure what to do.

"Ahh commander," said Tali, "I wanted to speak to you. Thank you again for allowing me to join you on this mission, I promise you won't regret it. As well as an expert on the Geth, I'm also a pretty competent engineer, I'd be more than happy to help out your engineering team in any way I can."

"Thank you Tali, but that won't be necessary. If you want to help, what you can do is write a report for me on what you know about the Geth. Specifically on their different unit types, what their capabilities are, what tactics they're likely to use etc. I'd like to review that as soon as possible and share your intel with the rest of the crew, it could be very useful."

"Of course, I'll get right on that," Tali said, a little dejected.

"And you, Lucius, I have… an offer for you. I would like to give you a translator and a new amp, and have Lieutenant Alenko here start training you properly," Shepard said. Lucius' face lit up at the prospect. "But to do that, you would need to stay here, on the ship. You would need to leave the Citadel, for the time being at least. Before you decide, you should know that this ship is on a very important and probably dangerous mission. I don't plan on putting you anywhere near the front lines, but that doesn't mean you won't be in danger. Also, this is a military ship. You won't be an official member of the Alliance, but I still expect you to follow my orders while you are on my ship. Does that interest you?"

"I, uhh, yes. I would like to stay. To train." Lucius wasn't too worried about danger. He had dealt with danger for years now, and he always felt safe behind his barriers. And for some reason he couldn't quite put his finger on, he liked these people. He trusted them.

"Good. Alenko, take him down and get him equipped." Shepard breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn't sure what she would do if Lucius refused her. Given what she had learned she wasn't prepared to let him just disappear back onto the station, but she didn't have the time or manpower to keep him on board without his consent. Even if she had, she didn't want to.

* * *

Kaidan and Lucius went down to the quartermaster, with Tali tagging along so they had someone to test the translator on. Kaidan acquired the equipment (on the commander's tab) and gave Lucius his translator. It was a small circular device about an inch across, somewhat resembling a transparent band-aid. Around the outside of the circle on one side was an adhesive, while the inner part was what looked like a lump of glass a few millimetres thick. If one looked closely one could almost see tiny markings within the glass, evidence of the almost microscopic mechanisms inside. Kaidan attached the device over Lucius' left temporal bone, in front of the ear and just above the jawbone. It was almost invisible, no wonder people hadn't immediately realised he didn't have one.

Next Kaidan gave Lucius an omni-tool, one of the basic models as the more advanced features would be lost on him anyway. It looked like a bracelet, or like a wristwatch without the clock face. A tap on the inner wrist section and Lucius forearm lit up with a projected hologram. After a minute of tapping on the virtual keyboard the omni-tool paired with the translator. The term 'translator' was actually a bit of a misnomer, the omni-tool and it's built in microphone did the translating, while the transparent device on his cheek was really just a speaker using bone conduction: the glass lump would vibrate through his skull bones into his inner ear, allowing him to hear the translated versions without affecting his ability to hear the sounds around him.

"There you go," Kaidan said, "should be all sorted. Your omni-tool can do all sorts of other things, but nothing crucial you need to know just yet, so you can just pick them up as you go."

Tali added "I can show you some things later, if you like. You can access the extranet, send people messages…"

Lucius' mouth hung open. Tali stopped, not quite sure what this expression meant. Lucius could still hear Tali talking in the alien gibberish he was getting used to, but now there was another, slightly louder voice. He couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from, but it was in perfect english, and even sounded a bit like Tali's voice.

"I take it from the look on your face that the translator is working," Kaidan grinned. "It takes a bit of getting used to, but soon your brain will sort of filter out their actual speech mostly, making it easier to concentrate on the translation. Right now it probably sounds a bit like two people talking at once, but you'll get there. And a few lessons in omni-tools sounds like a good idea, but right now Tali has a report to write and we have an amp to install, so maybe another time."

"Yes, of course… I'll leave you to it then." Tali turned around to go back up the slow elevator. She wasn't going to enjoy this. When it came to things like maths, science and particularly programming and engineering she was a prodigy, but writing was never a talent of hers. And now she was supposed to write a… military intelligence report? She had never even read one of those, let alone written one.

Lucius was still a little dumbstruck, but snapped out of it as the elevator doors were closing and called out a goodbye.

"Okay, now for your new amp Lucius." Kaidan stepped behind him and carefully plugged in the standard-issue Alliance biotic amp into a cybernetic port on the back of Lucius' neck. Normally a biotic's amp would be paired with their own omni-tool, but given the circumstances Kaidan paired it with his own for now.

"Okay Lucius, time for your first lesson," he powered up the amp to 15%, "we're going to start off real slow. This isn't going to be me teaching you any new techniques, this is just about getting you used to the amp. In a combat situation control is far more important than power." Wrex, leaning against a wall on the side of the cargo bay scoffed, but Kaidan ignored him and continued. "You need to be absolutely sure that whatever you do won't harm your fellow soldiers, and will help them or harm your enemy in a tactical way. You also, ideally, want to use the minimum amount of force that will get the job done, saving your energy for later. Battles are often about endurance more than anything else."

"But onto the lesson itself." Kaidan brought over a large exercise ball. This ball had an iron weight in the middle, surrounded by a thick layer of foam. The foam would help reduce injury, but throw the ball hard enough and it could still hurt someone. "I've only partially powered your amp, but you'll still be much stronger than you're used to. Come lift the ball, get a feel for the weight of it. Then, without using your biotics to reduce it's mass, lift the ball to about eye level. Hold it steady there for a few seconds, then gently place it back on the ground."

Lucius was actually a little disappointed, none of this sounded difficult or even new to him. He manually picked up the ball to see how heavy it was, then took a few steps back. He charged his biotics, then lifted the ball. It shot straight up into the air, hitting the ceiling with a bang before crashing back down to the floor. Ashley, reassembling a gun in the corner after cleaning it, yelped in shock and dropped the pieces she was holding. She glared over at the two biotics, then glared at Wrex as he chuckled. Lucius went red with embarrassment.

"Yep, that's pretty much what I thought would happen," said Kaidan, "try again. Remember, you're stronger than you think you are."

Lucius tried again. This time barely putting any energy into it. The ball slowly, shakily rose to about chest level, then shot up over their heads before coming back down to eye level, wobbling there for a bit, then coming back down to the floor harshly.

"Much better," said Kaidan. "Now I have some other duties to attend to, but I want you to practice this an hour or two each day until you can do this." Kaidan lifted the ball himself now: it shot of the floor to his eye level, staying there motionless for a few seconds before shooting back down to the floor, slowing just before impact to land silently. "When you have that level of control we can try some throws and other techniques."

"Oh, and one last thing you can work on, your barriers. Raise your barrier for me." Lucius dutifully did so. Kaidan tested it with an outstretched hand, a blue shimmer in the air appearing as he made contact with it. "Good, now bring it in closer to your skin for me, there, hold it there. It's good you can raise it so quickly, but sometimes in combat attacks come completely by surprise. In the field you need to be able to hold this basic barrier more or less indefinitely. It shouldn't be too taxing on your energy levels, but it does require concentration. Whenever you are in this room, practicing biotics or not, I want you to be holding your barrier. It should eventually become an automatic reflex. Keep practicing with the ball and holding your barrier for the next hour, then take a break. Do another hour tomorrow morning and I'll check on your progress." Kaidan left the boy and went back up to the CIC.

Over the next hour Lucius practiced eagerly with the ball. He knew that without the amp he would already have been close to Kaidan's level of control, he just needed to get used to it. He was eager to impress his new teacher. At some point the Normandy took off and Shepard made a rousing speech over the intercom, but Lucius was barely paying attention. By the end of the session he was much improved, still a little wobbly at times but he hadn't hit the ceiling or floor too hard for a while now. Ashley, who had seemingly cleaned every gun in the Normandy's arsenal as she watched him, walked over.

"Not bad kid," she gently punched him on the shoulder, "but looks like you forgot about your barrier at some point."

"Damn it."

* * *

 **Author's Note: So I'm going down to weekly updates now. I've now posted everything I had written before publishing, but my chapters are pretty short so I should be able to keep up and post a new one every Monday. Thanks to everyone who had followed/favourited and special thanks to those who have reviewed or PMed me.**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

SSV Normandy

Lucius got into the elevator with Ashley to head up to the mess hall (though 'hall' was a huge exaggeration for the area on this small ship). After his biotic workout he was suddenly very hungry. The elevator door opened to show the area full of people. It was around the time designated as dinner, though of course being a spaceship this was a fairly arbitrary designation, and many crew members would ignore these suggestions if they had duties to complete. At the moment however, most of the crew had some downtime while the ship made the uneventful trip to the Artemis Tau cluster, and so the room was much more crowded than it had been earlier.

Ashley showed Lucius where the food was kept. There were single serve meal available to be heated whenever a crew member was hungry or when it was convenient for them to heat, but at meal times like this a large pot of food was prepared for people to serve themselves from. Ashley and Lucius got their food, then Ashley left him to find his own seat while she sat on the last seat by some marines she knew. Lucius scanned the tables and saw Tali sitting at one. She was sipping something out of a foil packet, sitting near some crew members who were speaking to each other. She was clearly listening to their conversation but not really contributing, the crew members didn't seem bothered by her presence but still mostly ignored her. Lucius took his food over and sat opposite her, quite eager to be able to finally have a proper conversation her.

"Lucius! How did your training go?" Tali asked excitedly as she saw him approaching.

"Good. I think. It's weird, I've got this new amp so I'm kind of relearning the basics right now. It's frustrating but I think I'm getting better. What have you been doing?"

"Just settling in and trying to write this summary report on the Geth for Shepard. I think I'm mostly done, but I'm not really sure what to put in and what to leave out. I'm sure the finer details on Geth programming would mostly go over her head and probably wouldn't be too useful, and a detailed history of our war with them probably isn't too relevant, and then there's so much I don't know about how much they've changed over the centuries. I hope I've done it right and that it's useful but I don't know."

Tali was speaking very quickly and Lucius was having trouble following; he was still getting used to his translator. "What are Geth?" he asked.

"What are Geth?" Tali repeated, a little incredulous, "Oh, well I guess you wouldn't have met any yet. The Geth are who we are fighting! They're a race of artificial intelligences my ancestors accidentally created over 300 years ago. We fought a war with them and they killed most of my people, the survivors had to flee our home planet to survive. They haven't really been seen since, but now they're back and being led by a Turian named Saren. They are looking for something called 'The Conduit' and trying to bring back another, worse kind of AI called 'Reapers'. To be honest I'm not completely convinced they exist and aren't just a myth that Saren is using to control the Geth, but either way we're trying to stop Saren and his Geth army before they find whatever it is they are looking for. That's the short version, anyway."

"So they're like.. robots? But… bad robots? And we're going to fight them?"

"I guess that would be the extremely short version, but yes," Tali laughed. Lucius smiled, glad that he was following allowing, and returned his focus to his meal and frequently glancing around. "It's nice to see this room so full," Tali said, "it reminds me of being back on the fleet a bit, things are pretty crowded back home. Of course the fleet is crowded with quarians, not humans, but still."

"I don't like it. I've never really like crowds. Too many people. I always avoided them back at the Citadel."

"Oh," Tali replied. They finished their meals in semi-comfortable silence. Soon Dr Chakwas came over with a meal of her own.

"Hello you two, how are you settling in? Are you alright Lucius, you look a little uneasy?" asked the doctor.

"I'm fine," answered Lucius. Dr. Chakwas raised an eyebrow.

"He doesn't like crowds," added Tali.

"Ahh, well that's certainly understandable given… everything," Dr. Chakwas leaned in closer, "honestly I don't much like crowds either. That's why I spend all my time in the medbay even when I don't have patients." Lucius smiled. "You know there actually a small room just behind the medbay, I think it's supposed to be an office for me, or maybe just extra storage, but it's empty right now and I've no use for it so you're welcome to hang out in there. There's probably not a whole lot to do on a ship like this for people without official duties like you two."

"That sounds good! I think I'll go there now actually," said Lucius. The mess hall had actually filled up more, if that were possible. It seems the crew had taken their first official meal after leaving the Citadel as an excuse for a social occasion. Many people were now eating standing up, as there weren't any seat left, and were half-excitedly, half-fearfully speculating on what the mission might hold for them.

Lucius and Tali got up to leave and some crew members almost immediately took their seats. "I'll come too," Tali said, "I promised to show you how to use that new omni-tool."

For the rest of the 'evening' Tali showed Lucius some of what his omni-tool could do. She showed him how to send messages, and gave him her extranet address to demonstrate it. She showed him how to look people up, they looked up Dr. Michel and found her address. He sent her a message telling her that they were okay and what they had been doing. Next she showed him how to do extranet searches, the galactic codex (a sort of encyclopaedia) and a variety of social medias, image and video sharing sites etc. Lucius seemed a bit bewildered by the possibilities of this tiny bracelet, and so Tali decided to end the lesson there. Lucius could explore the rest at his leisure, so she left him to it.

Lucius had been taught to read and write as a child, and he had a few children's books at the facility on Terra Nova, but it had been some time since he had put any of those skills to practice. After Tali had left, he found his way back to the extranet search bar and slowly typed 'kwurien' into the virtual keyboard.

'Did you mean "quarian"?'

Lucius pressed the link, which took him to the codex entry on them. He began to read. He didn't understand all of it but it was still informative, and thankfully there were several pictures to help. He read several more entries on The Migrant Fleet, Geth, The Council, Spectres and other topics before falling asleep on the floor of the small room. He didn't mind, he was used to sleeping like that.

An hour or so later Dr. Chakwas found him. She got out a fold-out cot, meant to be used for when the medbay became too full, and set it up in the room before waking the boy and guiding him to it. He would have had a spot to sleep assigned to him in the crew quarters but he seemed to prefer it here, she thought, and this way she could keep an eye on him. She was worried about how he would adjust to this drastic change in his life.

* * *

The next day Kaidan went down to the cargo bay to find Lucius practicing his biotics. He was waving the ball around smoothly, not quite as precisely as Kaidan had demonstrated the day before, but still a huge improvement. "Not bad kid, not bad at all." Kaidan walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder, but his hand was stopped just before making contact. "And your barrier is up as well. Good."

"Yeah I kept forgetting at first, but Wrex has been helping me," replied Lucius.

"Oh, has he now?" said Kaidan, raising an eyebrow at the enormous krogan standing off to the side. Wrex had barely moved since his arrival on the Normandy. "How nice of him."

"I'm a helper," said Wrex disinterestedly. He picked up a used heat clip, a lump of metal weighing around half a kilogram, from the table next to him and threw it at Lucius. It bounced off his barrier and hit the deck with a clang. "Yep, barriers still up," he said as he biotically pulled the clip back to his hand.

"That's… thanks for helping Wrex, but maybe try something a little softer. We don't want to hurt him."

"I've always found pain to be an excellent teacher, but you're the boss," answered Wrex with a grin.

"Great. Well I've brought some things to help us with our next lesson." Kaidan held up a few cardboard targets, the kind that would be used at a shooting range. He dragged a crate over and hung them, each suspended by a thin cable, from the ceiling near the large cargo door. There were three of them, hung around eye level and about a metre apart. "Okay Lucius, now stand here near the elevator and cast a throw at the middle target, nothing too powerful."

Lucius did as he was asked, stood about ten metres from the targets and cast his throw. All three targets flew backwards as if hit by a strong wind. "Okay," Kaidan said, "try again, but this time hit _only_ the middle target."

"Only the middle one? Umm… I'll try," Lucius said. He tried again, with much the same result as the first attempt.

"Don't worry, you've never done something like this before have you? Your throw is pretty good for a wide throw, which is great for knocking down a few people at once, but usually you'll want to focus it to just one target. This can make it stronger, focusing all that energy into one spot rather than wasting it by spreading it out. And sometimes there might be friendlies, or something explosive, or something else you don't want to hit just next to your target. You need to be able to focus your biotics so you only hit what you want to hit. Like this." Kaidan cast a throw of his own. The middle target flew backwards while the two nearby remained still. "Here I'll show you."

Kaidan spent the next 15 minutes demonstrating and giving tips before leaving Lucius to practice on his own. "I know it's frustrating, but keep at it. Once you've learned this I'll see about bumping up your amp's power a bit more," he said as he entered the elevator. Wrex waited until the doors slid shut before picking up the heat clip again and taking aim.

* * *

Shepard sat in her quarters, taking a break. Not that she had much to take a break from. They had arrived in the Artemis Tau cluster some time ago, and she had just been in the CIC while they scanned the Athens system for activity, looking particularly for signs of the Geth, but also for any prothean ruins or other signs that Liara might be nearby as well as keeping an eye out for any signs of the missing Alliance marine squad which Rear Admiral Kahoku had asked her to look for. It had been strange to receive a request from a Rear Admiral, rather than an order, but she supposed she would have to get used to it in her new position.

Travelling between the planets in the system and scanning each one had taken a couple of hours, and for most of it she had had nothing to do other than watch people do their jobs. They had found nothing, and were now en route to the Knossos system. She would let them scan this system without their captain breathing down their necks, she thought.

She had learned many years ago that as a soldier most of your time was spent hanging around waiting for orders. She was now learning that as a commanding officer most of your time was spent hanging around waiting for your orders to be carried out. In fact, after she had boarded the Normandy and given her orders to search the Artemis Tau cluster she could have spent all her time in her quarters talking to no one and the mission would have progressed much the same way as it had, and that was almost a day ago. Still, it was good for morale for her to be seen taking an active role in the running of the ship. Not too active mind you, most people don't like to be micromanaged.

She scrolled through the list of personal messages she had received in the past day, mostly requests for interviews from various news organisations. She ignored them all. She was sure that one day soon Alliance brass would ask her, or tell her, to do an interview, after all humanity getting it's first Spectre was a big deal, but until that happened she would ignore the messages. She had no desire to be famous. With a bored sigh she decided to walk the ship and see how the new arrivals were settling in.

She found Tali sitting at a table in the mess hall just outside her quarters fiddling with her omni-tool. She looked a little bored. "Tali, thanks for that report. It was very useful. I think the next time we find some geth I'd like to take you into the field, see how your expertise works in action." In truth the report did have some very useful information, but most of that Shepard had already picked up from her encounter on Eden Prime. The rest of it was a little… overly technical. Hopefully seeing Tali in action would prove more useful.

"Oh yes, the would be good! Hopefully we find them soon. Oh, no, I mean I hope we don't find any of them. No wait, we know they're out there and we're looking for them, I do hope we find them. I mean, hopefully they aren't with Liara, I… ugh, I'm going to stop now." Tali rested her head on the table.

"Relax Tali," Shepard laughed as she walked over to the elevator, "we'll find them soon enough."

Shepard walked out into the cargo bay to see Lucius practicing his biotics with some targets placed on the other side of the room. Garrus was near the lockers tinkering with his sniper rifle while Wrex was in the corner on her left leaning against the wall. "Well, good to see your all keeping… busy," Shepard said as she glanced at Wrex, "I just came down to…"

"Captain to the CIC urgently, Captain to the CIC. We've got something on the long range scanners in the Knossos system," XO Pressly interrupted through the PA.

"Well, never mind then," Shepard said as she quickly turned around and got back into the elevator.

"What do you reckon that's about?" asked Garrus once she had left.

"How would I know?" replied Wrex gruffly.

"Hmm… I'm putting my armour back on," said Garrus as he opened his locker.

"I never took mine off," said Wrex as he threw the heat clip at Lucius. This one hit him on the arm, no barrier, and would leave a bruise. Wrex said nothing as he biotically recalled the clip.

Shepard walked onto the CIC, taking her position on the bridge. "What have we got?"

"A Geth ship in orbit over Therum, frigate sized but I don't want to speculate too much on what that means for its capabilities," answered Pressly.

"Has it spotted us?"

"Doesn't look like it. It hasn't moved, just holding it's steady orbit. I'd say our stealth system is working."

"Hmm. It seems likely that our target is on that planet then. Unless she's on that ship instead."

"We're too far out to properly scan the planet. If she's already on their ship I'd say our chances of retrieval are pretty slim. We might be able to take them by surprise and disable them, but I don't like the idea of boarding a Geth ship with no idea of what we might find or what their numbers would be, and I'm not the one who will have to do it."

"Agreed. Joker, take us in nice and quiet. Let's see if we can find out more before making our move. Passive scans only, let's not give ourselves away just yet."

"Aye aye, Commander," said the pilot over the intercom.

After a few minutes they were able more closely examine the planet. "We've got activity on the planet, looks like Geth," said one of the many technicians at one of the terminals dotted around.

"Also found what looks like some kind of mining facility. They appear to be heading towards it," said another.

"That's probably where the prothean ruins, and Liara are. Looks like they don't have her yet," concluded Shepard.

"But if they're coming for her then she's probably involved," said Pressly, "maybe she's found something in those ruins, another beacon?"

"Maybe. All right, I'll take the ground team in the Mako and pull her out. But first, let's cut off their retreat. Joker, line up an attack run on that frigate. Weapons, target their engines first. We don't know much about their weak spots, but that's usually a good place to start."

"Aye aye sir," came a chorus from around the room.

The lighting throughout the ship switched to red and an alarm sounded. Shepard cut through it with an announcement: "Attention all crew. Battle stations. We have found a Geth frigate and are initiating combat from stealth. The bastards won't know what hit them. I repeat, all crew to battle stations." She let the alarm sound for another fifteen seconds before switching it off. No sense in having that grating alarm going while people were trying to concentrate.

The Normandy approached the geth frigate, firing missiles from close range, or close range for space battles at least. The missiles screamed along the hundred or so kilometres to their target. The Geth, while unable to detect the Normandy, detected the missiles immediately and, with a reaction time only a machine would be capable of, fired up their engines and prepared to do evasive manoeuvres. By the time they began to move, however, the Normandy was already in a different spot and with its main cannons fired a volley at their engines. To the geth these rounds seemed to come from empty space, and they had no time to dodge. The first two shots depleted their shields, the third and fourth were a direct hit and their main engine was taken out. With time they may have been able to repair them, but they would not have time. A few moments later the missiles impacted, burrowing through the whole opened in their thruster before detonating. Secondary explosions rocked the ship before they lost power completely. The frigate was still largely intact, at least from the outside, but were well and truly out of the battle. A cheer went through the CIC, soon spreading to the lower decks.

"Joker, find me a landing spot and prep the Mako. We're going in."


End file.
